Timid Script Stifles Bernie Mac in Race-Reversed Remake

Professionally caustic and often brilliant, comedian Bernie Mac still ain't got nothing on my pops and his friends. After I brought home a decidedly Nordic-featured lass (being a lighter shade of brown myself), my fatherwho, to his credit, won't spare his only son from a well-aimed jabshared with me what his friend had said after seeing my Nordiquette and me together: "Your boy done went Tiger Woods on you." I had to smile because, well, that shit was funny, but funny because it hurt a little bitfunny because the hurt bled truth.

In Guess Who, Mac plays Spencer Tracy to Ashton Kutcher's Sidney Poitier (yeah, I said it), racially inverting Stanley Kramer's pointed, "pigmentation problem" classic, 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Kutcher isshockno Poitier, and his performance as Mac's prospective son-in-law is largely textureless. But the screenwriters deserve a cowardly lion's share of the blame. At times no more than a collection of comedic set piecesMac and Kutch sharing a bed, listening to "Ebony and Ivory," or racing go-kartsthe film is predictable and its humor is tension free, ultimately hurting only Mac, whose lifeblood is his threateningly melodic cadence and irresistible I-say-what-you-scared-to-say vibe. Mac's acidic humor is often predicated on a challenge, revealing the truth at the heart of every quiphis goading of Kutcher to tell black jokes over dinner is Guess Who's sole piece of geniusand the script's lack of nerve fails to challenge him or its audience with enough dangerous humor. PETER L'OFFICIAL

photo: Claudette Barius/Sony Pictures

Bedroom eyes: Kutcher and Mac

BEAUTY SHOPDirected by Bille WoodruffMGM, opens March 30

A morality play paradoxically pimping self-reliance and community, 2002's Barbershop stresses the importance of its titular location as a haven for free speech. After being chastised for his boneheaded dismissal of Rosa Parks's achievements, Cedric the Entertainer's character asks: "If we can't talk straight in a barbershop, then where can we talk straight?" An extended riff on its progenitor, Beauty Shop also offers opportunities for trenchant observation, though the clientele prefers kinky sex advice to sociopolitical chitchat. Girls just wanna have fun, and so does the film, which recycles the requisite moralizing into a breezy, sporadically funny package. Queen Latifah takes the Ice Cube role, playing a cosmetologist who ditches a ritzy Atlanta salon in order to beautify the ladies DIY-style. Highlights include a drive-by bitching from her former boss and a deus ex machina in the form of a pint-sized booty hound. AKIVA GOTTLIEB

DOT THE IWritten and directed by Matthew ParkhillSummit, opens April 1

Calling Matthew Parkhill's labyrinthine debut feature a case of bait and switch seems woefully inadequatebait and immolate would be more like it. Superficially a heart-wrencher in which a soon-to-be-married Spanish siren considers dumping her fiancé after locking lips with an unemployed actor, the film begins innocuously enough, a drab indie three-hander decked out with "edgy" formal flourishes (abrupt shifts to video, Lynchian soundtrack hums) to compensate for its lack of heat. But Parkhill, far too eager to wow them in the end, has crafted a twist-is-everything scenario, evincing a sub-Mamet level of concern for plot holes or audience satisfaction. Given dot the i 's ultimate subject, The Bachelorette would have been a better title, but the movie finally undermines all pretensions of satire with its geeky eagerness to subvert expectations. At the close, a filmmaker character snags an award for ingenuity. The title's "i" might well stand for illusions. BEN KENIGSBERG

GIRL PLAYDirected by Lee FriedlanderWolfe, opens April 1, Quad

Tedious narcissists Robin Greenspan and Lacie Harmon star as themselves in this adaptation of their play Real Girlswhich recounts how the two drama queens met and fell in love. "We were friends from doing stand-up comedy," Greenspan earnestly explains in direct address before a brick wall, trading narrator duties with Harmon. Cast by a fruity director (Dom DeLuise) to star in a sapphic stage show, the gals feel sparks while posing for a topless publicity shot. Greenspan ends her dead-end LTR to set up house with Harmon, who vows to work on her intimacy issues. The she-said, she-said, punctuated by artless flashback, essays lesbian bed death, coming out to Mom, and schoolgirl crushes. Greenspan and Harmon's paltry song of themselves concludes with five minutes of outtakes, capping the self-love. MELISSA ANDERSON

Wavelengths

TEDIOUS LIMBSEXHIBIT BApril 1 through 10, Anthology

Less than a week after a celebration of trippy '60s intermedia collective USCO, Anthology follows up with a gallery exhibition devoted to the loose tribe of neo-psychedelic op-rock artists who emerged from the Providence music scene of the last decade. Organized by Devin Flynn (of bass-thwomping noise band Pixeltan), the event kicks off with an April Fools' Day rock show-cum-video screening, and continues for 10 days with Takeshi Murata's DVD installation of locked-groove loops by various contributors. Staging the event within Anthology's celluloid-stuffed cinema justly calls attention to the fact that the intensely crafted output of these erstwhile Rhode Islanders consists not only of bone-rocking audio compositions, cute-brut comix, and disturbing knitwear; these post-collegiate collectives have also created some of the raddest avant-garde movies of the Aughties.